Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Can't We All Just Get Along?

As I'm writing this, I'm ending my mini-sabbatical. Oh, you didn't know that I was on a sabbatical? That's because I have figure reviews done until the beginning of March and the articles done until, well now, I suppose. I just needed some time to recharge the batteries, so to speak. In that time, I've been playing a lot of Lego Marvel Superheroes, and just kinda staying away. I checked the blog to follow-up on any comments that anyone may have posted, but that was about it. I just needed some time to reflect, I suppose; I didn't write anything during my time away, which I really need to since I still have a bunch of figures to get through. Anyway, during this time a very interesting thing happened on one of the Facebook groups that I'm a member of and it brought me back in form the cold.

Pic courtesy of Abbie G.

This proved to be an extremely popular post on the Facebook group, and pretty much for the reasons that I'm sure those that read this blog are thinking - it's a female Transformer collector! The comments were all over the place. Some were commenting on her collection, others about the fact that she was a female collector and they couldn't get over that fact. I found the premise of the picture amusing, but I was more intrigued by the ginormous collection behind her. Which brings me to a point, and I'm sorry if this I stray while making my point, but bear with me.

I got intrigued by the comments from the above picture and it got me thinking about women in the Transformer fandom and in general "geek" culture. I decided to contact Abbie on Facebook to ask her a few questions. First off, she's had a lot of G1 figures as a kid, but started all over again about ten years ago. During that time, she's amassed over 3000 figures! That's something like 8 times the figures that I have! No matter how you slice it, that's a hardcore collector.

When I asked her if she was expecting the reaction that she got, she told me that "Being in a male dominated world of transformers, it was apparent that it would happen - the pick up lines, the few side messaging. I took no offense to any remarks, so no harm was done. So you can say I went in with an open mind." That to me is disappointing. Shouldn't anyone wanting to talk about Transformers or posting a picture be able to just do that without having to deal with that?

My version of the pic. My room is a mess

On that topic, Abbie felt that she's "had nothing but compliments
and that feels great. But...I know that day will come when I'll get
some hate mail and I'm okay with that. But to be completely honest,
when I made my first post, I was nervous and thought I
would get negative feed back right away. But it all worked out and that
makes me a happy camper." Which is good, and I'm glad that she's had a good experience. She's also stated that "I have great conversations with
other tf collectors. We can talk for hours on end and never get bored.
Now I have had a small percentage of people to start out with tf talk then
turn fast towards sexual talk. And then that's where I draw the line.
They tend to forget we're in a tf page and assume we're in a dating site." Why is there this expectation that just because she's a woman and into Transformers, that she wants to talk to other collectors about anything other than that? Would these same guys approach another woman and start into sexual talk so quickly? Or is it because a woman in into the same thing (Transformers, Masters Of the Universe, Star Wars, whatever) as the guy she's talking to, then she's fair game?

I talked about this with my best friend, Kelly, who has worked for DragonCon (yes, the infamous one) in Atlanta for the last few years doing publicity. I figured that she would have some stories or insight into this. One thing she told me was that from her experience, when guys at DragonCon see a woman that identifies as geeky, the assumption is that she's desperate and kinky. Kelly related a story to me about the con last year when a guy about half her age was trying to get into her pants because of her geek tendencies. Apparently, according to her, all social morays vanish and guys lose their filter when they're around geeky women. I don't know if this is true or not since I'm not regularly around geeky women.

Which brings me to my point. While a lot of the geek culture has gone mainstream to a point, the Transformers fandom is still pretty much on the fringes. If I tell someone I'm into Star Wars or Star Trek or even Dr. Who, they'll want to have a three hour conversation about it. I'm not into Dr. Who, just so you know. Anyway, when I tell them that I'm really into Transformers, I usually get a stare and a derisive "you mean those robots that turn into cars?" And since we're on the edges of the culture, should we really be alienating fellow collectors simply because they're a different gender? A fandom is only strong unless everyone within that fandom is allowed to speak their opinions and add their point of view. Giving a fellow fan unwanted advances simply because she posted a picture isn't the way to strengthen the fandom, only the way to weaken it.

10 comments:

I loved this post and it's just a small slice of the overwhelming gender issues going on in all geek fandoms at the moment. We've seen it rear its ugly head at the TF fandom's response to Mairghread Scott's upcoming Windblade series. But the reality is that there are scores of female TF fans, and I think there always have been, and it's just a shame that they should be treated any differently than their male counterparts, and it's a shame that the series gets the stereotypical "boys toys" treatment with very few female characters represented.

I was re-reading issue 39 of the original Marvel comics last night, and there's a VERY long-winded letter in "Transmissions" from a female writer, who at the end of her letter finds it necessary to defend her gender. (She basically says, "Yes I'm into robots, get over it.")

All that to say I'm looking forward to a time both when we have more female characters in the toylines/fiction and less stigma surrounding female fans.

I'm going to keep my reply simple in that it should be like this.....ANYONE or ANYTHING that helps to contribute positively to our fandom should be treated the same way in return.

There's always going to be knuckleheads out there that really have no kind of social skills because they never leave the confines of their bedrooms, and thus they loose all filters and don't think in certain situtations. It's going to happen with everything in life and should just be ignored....luckily its become easier to block people out of our lives online.

We are in such a small niche of collecting that we need to band together more.

You know you've hit it big when you start getting hate mail! I see the same thing happen w/ guys into video games find out that perrson kicking their butt in a game in Halo turns out to be of the opposite sex. That's usually when I mute that player because the last thing I want to hear is someone just acting a fool.

I'm with you on the races, especially the flying ones. The altitude controls are just counter-intuitive and cumbersome. I've 100% every Lego game except this one and I don't think I could be bothered. Loved the rest of the game though.